> I don't think this is just a matter of taste. Advanced features allow the programmer to express more complex things more directly and less verbosely.
The fact that you and I disagree about how readable Go is should be evidence enough that it is a matter of taste. Otherwise we would be both agreeing that these facts lead the same outcome on readability rather than myself offering counterexamples to your points (and in fairness I don't disagree that you have well reasoned points even if I don't agree with your conclusion)
Here's another contradiction: Perl is often joked as being "executable line noise" because it allows you to express things in any which way you like and is antithetical to the very concept of verbosity. Yet these are properties you argue in favour of readability. So rather than verbosity+features having a boolean outcome on readability, I'd argue it's really more of a spectrum where (1) verbosity and (2) flexible grammar / descriptive features are axis on a graph. Somewhere in the middle will be a cluster of languages people consider readable - with some individuals preferring languages that scores higher or lower on one axis than another.
On the topic of verbosity, I've always thought the the language grouping (eg is it a higher or lower level language) gave a better approximation. For example Go does force some functions to be needlessly verbose however when taking your typical Go application and comparing it to the same thing writen in idiomatic Java or C# - languages I'd argue are in the same group - then Go doesn't actually come out all that badly at all. The problem Go has is the ugly areas of Go taints user perception for the other 90+% of the code (if it were as bad as some people express then I wouldn't waste my time with Go either).
For example it sounds like you favour OOP where as I tend to favour a more functional approach?
(disclaimer in case of knee jerk comments: I'm not calling Go a "functional language")